Aerobic respiration - the evolutionary moment where our ancestors traded immortality for complexity
That was the phrasing used in a biology of death class I took many years ago. It lives rent free in my mind because ruminating on it so perfectly summarizes the “choices” made by natural selection and the way they echo throughout the history of life on Earth.
That is interesting. I loved the original in my youth, but now that I am older, a cancer survivor, and with a lifetime of challenge and too many dead loved ones, Cash’s version speaks to me on a different level.
I’m not yucking your yum one bit. I am happy that you have a song that speaks to you.
I have always held that the up votes are for well written, thoughtful posts regardless of if I like the opinion. This is not really well written or thoughtful. It has a certain unhinged vibe to it.
I did up vote for the passion and because I sort of love a little chaos, but it was a tight choice.
Yeah, it is. The injections suck, and the hormone shifts are awful. One of my friends is a general practitioner in the Navy, and every time he prescribes any fertility hormone, he also gives a referral for couples counseling. “I know you believe you won’t need it, and you might be right, but in my experience by the time you realize you need it, you need it RIGHT NOW.” The IVF hormones are around then the ones he can prescribe, and it was a wild ride.
Of course I don’t know your SIL, but please extend my best to her and her family at some point. As one stranger on the Internet who knows roughly the path she walked, I am very happy it went well for her in the end.
Also, real talk, you sound like a great in-law to her for being so aware of everything. Kudos to you.
I agree 100% that it is initially confusing to the outsider. I will admit that I struggle with charitable feelings when this topic gets tossed around so often and it is easily researchable. Perhaps I am just tired of having the same discussion so many times.
And yeah, the “pray to X” used a shorthand by many for “ask X to pray on my behalf” doesn’t help. It also gets further confounded by the huge number of both discrete and nuanced folk religions that exist simultaneously within members of the Catholic faith.
Catholics do not worship the saints. The dogma is that one may ask a saint to pray on their behalf. Do some Catholics not follow this format to the letter? Nope, some do not. Some/many will follow dogma mentally but use a short hand phrase like, “pray to X,” to mean requesting intercession.
The statues, pendants, and other ornaments are not idols but just works of art or symbols of allegiance to a specific order. They hold extra significance for some, but that is effectively as far as they go.
Offerings are to the church. Leaving an offering at the shrine of a saint is not an offering to that saint. It is an offering to the church, possibly to the portion of the church maintaining that specific shrine.
I know this can feel nit-picky, but it is what happens when teachings build upon teachings for thousands of years. One can certainly argue that Catholics are wrong about any number of things in this world, but the notion that Catholicism runs on idolatry is at best an accidental misinterpretation and unfortunately is often an intentional misrepresentation by the leaders of fellow Christians.
The concept of changing the Bible gets a little weird because we are almost universally discussing a translation of the “original” text, with the original as we commonly think of it being a Greek translation that was commonly in use in the years preceding and including the life of the historical Jesus. It gets more complex than that, but it’s a good start.
I am using the historical Jesus as a reference point because there are things that scholars, theistic and non-theistic alike, almost universally agree to as being historical as opposed to matters of faith.
Jews, Catholics, and Protestants number the commandments differently though all contain effectively the same content and total up to 10. The Catholic numbering predates the Protestant numbering by centuries. I do not know the timeline of the Jewish numbering. One could easily assume it predates the Catholic numbering, but many Jewish customs date to later eras (often medieval Rabbinical Judaism). I have not looked up the Jewish tradition recently. Regardless, the Catholic numbering predates the Protestant numbering.
Idols are an interesting thing, especially taken in the context of the belief of ancient Semitic peoples. The short version being that it takes much more than just the existence of a statue or an image to be an idol. There are cultural nuances from the time, but at the very least it requires worship of the image as on par with God. The comment you cite even includes the concept that worshipping these images is what makes them bad. The images in Catholic churches are not treated that way.
We happened to live in the U.S. state with the best reproductive rights laws and have the best health insurer for IVF in that state. It did cost thousands of dollars, but it was still 4 digits overall. We were getting by on a single income at the time, but it was really the health insurance and state laws that made it doable.
We needed two cycles because the first failed completely, but the second cycle (ICSI for those who care) produced multiple embryos. They only implanted one at a time, so my second kid is a freezer baby.
But yeah, my wife has a true, diagnosed needle phobia and did it anyway. She is a God damn trooper.
Would you care to explain that thought process? I mean the idolatry part. Inconsistency is pretty common along religions and nearly universal among Cousins Christian ones. I say that as a Christian, so I’m not even putting them down about it in particular.
But idolatry in particular from Catholics? That accusation is usually not based in the actual faith but I’m in outside interpretations. Still, I’m open to being incorrect.
Edited because I am the worst phone typist ever.
Nope! My wife was enjoying a chemically-induced nap in one room when my kids were conceived. I was in another room with broken DVDs and suspiciously easy to clean chairs. The kids were conceived in a third room by a lab worker and incredibly complex equipment.
The traditional way is much more fun. Try that first.
I would strongly encourage you to get standard-sized appliances, especially for ones that slot into a specific space like a dishwasher.
We recently needed to buy a new refrigerator. Our opening could not take a standard 36" French door fridge - or must be either a single-door 36" or a French door 33". Neither of those are the current standard. While on the surface there are several models that could work in this space, it quickly became clear that we have virtually no options. Fancy ice maker? Not available. Door-in-door? Nope! Multiple interior layout options? Hah, no!
It turns out that companies only make significant options in the most common size. Thinking that you do not care about those options? I believe that you do not want them now. That may well change in the future, and then you will be stuck. A family’s needs change as everyone ages, and the things that feel great now may not be good choices for you later. Flexibility is king when it comes to long term planning.
Except the combined term did not always imply any support of romantic connection. I was a teacher, and a woman I worked closely with was my work wide. Others labeled us as work spouses because we worked very well together, had a deep platonic bond, and fulfilled many of the “traditional” spouse roles for each other at work. If she needed help hanging something up in her room, for example, or carrying something heavy, she came to me. I would seek her counsel on the emotional needs of students I had trouble reaching. We did bar trivia together without our spouses because we enjoyed it and they didn’t.
Nothing was romantic. Nothing was scandalous. No one thought we were more than friends except for our 9th grade students who thought we were siblings.
The whole work spouse = romance thing is more recent. People look for scandal where none exists.
Thank you!
Those would be X-tremeists. It’s an easy mistake to make.
Thank you! This is indeed those Whits. The design is very roughly inspired by the view of Lafayette from across Franconia Notch.
I would mildly disagree. Knowing your numbers for a lift can help you estimate where you should be on related lifts. It can also help you very roughly gauge your progress compared to others. The mechanical advantage, friction, and other physical aspects of any given machine play a huge role for sure, but one can broadly make comparisons.
I went through a period where I was under doctor’s orders to treat any fluid produced by my body as a biohazard. That meant any time I urinated I had to close the lid and flush twice. So yeah, there was no mellowing in that case.
Ooh, I actually know the answer to this! I had cancer a couple years ago, and it got really dicey for a bit. While my story has a good ending and I am now effectively cancer-free, I had to look the potential of death clear in the face and start making some concrete plans.
My answer is unequivocal - I would prepare my family for my untimely demise. My wife and I got together when we were young enough that we entered adulthood together and grew that way. There is no me and her - there is only us. This is not some creepy codependency thing. We just became adults whose emotional and mental shapes are highly complimentary. That happens when you are with someone longer than you were not. We also have kids for whom I am the primary caretaker and stay-at-home dad while she works. Both boys are autistic though you might not notice it, and I am their primary coregulator. My family needs me in ways that are not universally true across families.
Most of my plan can be summarized as follows:
I know this is not terribly exciting, but it found that what I feared far more than death was the fate of my family without me there to care for them.
A couple friends have asked me if I would do this for money. I had to politely explain that they can’t afford me. It’s not that I am that good - I am just that slow! I can fake a lot with enough time and trips back to the garage to fix things.
Each kid and wifey could have individual Daddy/hubby attention at the same time. My yard and home would look immaculate because my ADHD task burnout could be overcome by calling in a new helper.
I could probably make bank and help improve the lot of humanity by allowing my duplicates to go through controlled medical and scientific testing.
At some point one of me would figure out how to leverage this ability for the absolute betterment of humankind. That would probably become a driving mission for the collective me at that point.